Consider upgrading from Windows XP

A reader, Christine, asks, “We have Windows XP — what should we do regarding continuing security online after Microsoft discontinues supporting it?”

The cut-off date for Microsoft to stop supporting Windows XP and Office 2003 is April 8, but Microsoft announced that it would extend its anti-malware security updates for XP until July 14, 2015. That gives XP users a little bit more wiggle room, but it’s still not a lot of time. The choices seem to be to hope that any anti-virus software you have will continue to update and be effective in preventing security threats after July 2015. More realistically, though, if you’re worried about computer security, you may need to start looking at either upgrading from Windows XP to something like Windows 7 or 8.1, or migrating to a new computer (say a newer PC laptop, tablet or Mac). If your computer is so old that it still runs Windows XP, it’s very likely it could be replaced by something much faster for less than $300. Microsoft and Apple both offer migration tools to move over all your data, though some older software may not run on a newer system.

How secure a Windows XP computer is after next year will really depend on how much Internet use it gets. If it’s critical that you keep a Windows XP computer around, another option would be to use it for offline activity only and get a newer machine for browsing the Web and everything else.